I heard this, this morning on the radio, made me chuckle, guy phones up how hard up he is earning 110k a week, complaining about his large mortgage, yep must be terrible paying for a six bedroom detached house, and pcp payments on a 5 series bmw (the last two are only guesses on his expenditure), either way 60k is over double the average national wage.

As usual the problem is with inexact terminology. My rich may be my friend's comfortable and your poor. There is no precise definition.

But relatively speaking £60k is a decent whack to most people; try and support a family in a decent part of Surrey on that though and you will certainly not feel rich. And whilst you may feel well off that will almost certainly not be the case if you lose your job and have no savings to fall back on.

A lot if the higher earners live in/near big cities though where house prices can be bordering on the ridiculous, by choice yes, but a young family early in their career may have little choice if they want to progress. Some of the most relatively hard up people I've met are those who've bought a £400k house in 2007 have a couple of kids and whose joint income is over £75k.

It really does depend, you may be earning that but have 2 people to support. If you wanted to live in the centre of Cambridge though you would likely need both parties in the relationship to be earning that amount I order t meet mortgage payments and still be able to afford to eat.

I spend a lot of time looking round at the cars on the road, the luxury purchases people are making, the cost of houses and wonder if they are largely self employed and lying about their earnings, if they all had large inheritances at some point, or if they are all just living in a lot more debt than I am.

For reference I think the average wage in my house in house is about £38k, so above average, but i don't feel rich, I also don't have any real money troubles and have just got back from a trip to NYC, so I am by no means complaining. I would also say I not as good at managing my money as some of my friends!

it might be more worthwhile to figure out how to effectively tax all those companies that manage to operate in this country at a loss, but make big global profits and not pay much tax here.

The only result is that they will make less return so will have to reduce staff costs and increase prices. It may well be good for smaller competitors but the end result is the employee earns less and the consumer pays more.

not doing that stupid 'help to buy' scheme would have helped keep some of the prices down...

True. I'm looking at the moment and H2B basically says to you as a buyer "Are you prepared to give up 20% of the future value of your house in order to live in a better house for that time"

It's quite a clever short term plan though - keep a lid on mortgage sizes whilst fuelling a housing boom, and ensuring that the government gets a cut of the boom. Long term, when the plan is removed prices will slump and everyone loses

On £60k, your take home is £3480 a month.
On £40k, your take home is £2502 a month.

Looking at rentals for instance:

In greater London, the average is £1316. Leaves you with £2164 or £1186, at £40k it's 52% of your wage.
In the North East, the average is £525. Leaves you with £2995 or £1977, at £40k it's 21% of your wage.

When looking at the most significant expenditure, you'd have to earn around 25% more in Greater London than the North East to maintain the same income once housing is accounted for.

Always a chuckle in these threads, the idea that you have to have a massive mortgage in order to live somewhere in order to make enough to pay a massive mortgage...

A lot if the higher earners live in/near big cities though where house prices can be bordering on the ridiculous, by choice yes, but a young family early in their career may have little choice if they want to progress. Some of the most relatively hard up people I've met are those who've bought a £400k house in 2007 have a couple of kids and whose joint income is over £75k.

Some of the most hard up people, not relatively, but actually, are people who live in rented accommodation and have 2 or 3 jobs which don't pay enough for them to have anything other than a telly...